Adamant (12 page)

“Ms Weston said I have to go and talk to her. She didn’t say that to you too, did she?”

“No. Is it because you arrested her?”

“I’ve no idea. I doubt she’ll tell me a thing. Most prisoners aren’t inclined to disclose information.”

“Perhaps she thinks you can charm the girl,” the centaur said. “Or perhaps she thinks it’ll be a laugh.”

“I doubt that,” I said, shook my head, and turned back to the files.

After going over the story yet again, I switched to autopilot and began thinking about how odd it all was. Was the girl really linked to the killer? If not, then who was she? And this questioning… it felt like a test. More like she wanted to find out about
me
than the prisoner. I didn’t care for that at all.

I turned over the last page, and a file fell onto the desk. It was the one Ms Weston had told me to return to the archives–and I recognised it as the same file I’d fetched for Mr Clark. The bloodrock research he’d been reading the day he’d died.

I opened the file. “PROPERTIES OF BLOODROCK” read the page’s header. Below, a standard list for logging offworld substances. I’d seen them before, as it was required to fill out one of these files for everything brought to Earth from offworld. The Alliance were sticklers for keeping paperwork up to date. This particular file was twenty-five years old. And the name of who’d logged the information leaped out like a neon sign.

LAWRENCE WALKER.

I held the paper carefully, willing my hands to stay steady. A creeping feeling crawled up my spine, and I glanced over my shoulder. No one else was here, as Markos had left the office to hand the papers he’d been filling in back to Ms Weston.
Calm down, Kay.
This didn’t mean anything. My father was one of the eminent members of the Alliance, for God’s sake, even if he’d left Earth years ago. His name was probably on half the files in the archives. Like Markos had said.

Shaking off the momentary unease, I carried on reading.

“SUBSTANCE: POWDERED BLOODROCK (EARTH NAME). ORIGIN WORLD: UNKNOWN. THIS SAMPLE IS FROM ENZAR (L2D63-9), REGISTERED UNSTABLE).”

The word ‘unstable’ was crossed out, replaced with ‘DANGEROUS’.

Enzar. I frowned at the page. That was one world I knew next to nothing about. The Alliance had cut itself off from the Enzarian Empire after a war between those with magic and those without had begun to drag in other nearby worlds, too. It was too dangerous to interfere in full-scale magical warfare. But the nature of that warfare remained a mystery, at least to me. The Alliance hadn’t posted a single notice about it since the declaration of noninterference. Twenty years ago.

Perhaps something had happened to merit a cover-up. It wasn’t uncommon, as far as dangerous offworld substances were concerned—hell, the Alliance worked hard to make sure this kind of information didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

I checked the time on my communicator, tempted to make for the fifth floor and the archives—but Ms Weston had said I had to talk to the prisoner. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was important.

Later,
I told myself, turning back to the file and flipping over the page. It listed the qualities of this bloodrock substance: negligible on Earth, but on high-magic worlds, it could function as a substitute for virtually anything magic-related.

Jesus,
I thought. No wonder it was listed as rare and unstable. In conjunction with other magic-based substances, it could act as an energy source. It could destroy whole universes—even knock the entire Balance out of sync.

Why in the Multiverse would the head of admin search out this?

I continued to read. “As the whereabouts and extent of this source are unknown, bloodrock is to be treated with caution and samples are not to be removed from storage.”

Had Ms Weston read this file? It didn’t seem like something a novice should be allowed access to. The Academy sure hadn’t covered offworld magic-based energy sources. The Alliance was understandably paranoid people would get stupid ideas. Even well-meaning scientists looking to save the planet. You couldn’t carry an unknown substance from one world to another and expect it to function the same. I could just picture idiotic teenagers getting hold of this bloodrock and using it to make fireworks or something. Not hard to imagine, because I’d
been
one of those idiotic teenagers, and hadn’t even known I was a magic-wielder until I’d first set foot in the Passages.

And this is why we don’t teach you about magic, kids.
It was unbelievable how many people on Earth still believed in the inaccurate versions of magic popularised by TV and the media, even with the Alliance out in the open the past thirty years. Outside the Alliance and the Academies worldwide, knowledge of magic was minimal, and other worlds guarded their own secrets well enough that I could only imagine what was possible in high-magic worlds. It wasn’t like there was an official guide to magic, even an unauthorised one. The Alliance prized confidentiality above everything else.

Natural magic-wielders rarely surfaced independently. Yet it was possible. In the Alliance, magic-wielders who made Ambassador were often the first picked for missions. I’d prefer to keep it under wraps until then. If Aric kept his stupid mouth shut. Though I never intended to use magic again, I could at least use it to my advantage.

There was one page left in the file, and it was almost blank. Apart from a handwritten scrawl in the corner.

Recognition grabbed me. I knew that handwriting, though I couldn’t read the words—it was just a meaningless string of letters and numbers. But it brought back the reminder that even though he’d been on a distant world locked in stasis for the past five years, my father’s presence still lingered over my shoulder like a goddamned Cethraxian shadow-monster.

I flipped over the page, focusing on calming my breathing. No one had seen this. I never should have opened the file in the first place. It didn’t tell me anything useful. It sure as hell didn’t explain why Mr Clark had been murdered.

I closed the file, suddenly tired beyond belief.
Focus.
Time to get my head back in the present. I checked all the forms were in the right order—again—and looked up to see a woman glaring at me across the office. I hadn’t met her before, but her badge told me she was called Saki, and she was one of the Alliance’s nurses.

“You’re Kay Walker, right?”

“Yes…” Why did she keep looking at me like I’d drowned a kitten in front of her?

“You arrested the prisoner?”

“I did, yeah.”

“She attacked me.”
Oh.
“You might have warned me. Your report only said
potentially dangerous.
She could have killed me.”

“You seem okay.” Wrong thing to say. Her eyes flashed. Well, she didn’t have a freaking footprint across her face, did she?

“Potentially dangerous? She made for the door as soon as her handcuffs came off. I thought she was injured.”

“What?” I blinked at her. “She’s a prisoner. I’d be surprised if she
didn’t
make an attempt to get out, given the opportunity.”

Saki just glared harder.

“How the hell is it
my
fault?” I said.

“Someone removed her handcuffs.”

“Not me.” I stood. “Does Ms Weston want me to talk to her now?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Saki’s glare could give the new boss a run for her money. And then she turned her back and stalked out.

What the hell was up with her? I shook my head. Everyone on the first floor of Central had officially gone batshit insane.

I turned back to the file.
Stop looking at it as if it’s going to burst into flames
. It might not seem to contain any clues, and Ms Weston had told me to return it to the archives… but something about it still nagged at me.

Could there really be a connection between Mr Clark’s research and his death? It just seemed
odd
that a killer would target someone so innocuous. If they could get into Central undetected, which was supposed to be impossible, then surely they would have gone after a more senior Alliance member. And the killer hadn’t left a trail of bodies behind as they sneaked inside. They’d only targeted one person. There was nothing random about this murder.

Right now, I just wanted the damn file gone, put away, so I didn’t have to carry what felt increasingly like incriminating evidence. I scanned it again to make sure I had it memorised, and my communicator buzzed in my pocket. I found the blunt message: “Prisoner is awake. Please proceed immediately down to lower corridor, first staircase on the right from the entrance hall.”

I sighed. No time to get rid of this thing now. Instead, I left it on the desk with the other files. No reason to get anyone else wrapped up in Kay’s Conspiracy Theories.

Time to talk to the prisoner.

ADA

The world was hazy when I woke up. For an instant, I thought I was at home, safe in my box-like room. But then the blank, starless ceiling of the cell confronted me, and the cold, horrible pressure of the handcuffs on my wrists and ankles returned.

I managed to push myself to a sitting position on the bed. My limbs felt floppy, and my depleted energy hadn’t returned. What the hell had they drugged me with? The back of my throat was dry, and my body ached from the battering it had taken yesterday. Would they at least let me change clothes? Blood had soaked through my jeans from where I’d skinned my knees on the pavement, and my T-shirt was spattered with blood too. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or Alliance Guy’s.

Holy hell, I assaulted a guard.
I wished I’d paid more attention to Nell’s lectures on the Alliance’s rules. They changed them every so often, and the actual punishment for, say, assaulting someone with magic wasn’t commonly known. I’d spent so much time around offworlders who came from places where one wrong word could lead to execution, it had made me distrust all authority. Whatever the Alliance’s reputation, this was twenty-first-century Britain. There was such a thing as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Maybe I’d get a trial. But it wasn’t like I had a lawyer or solicitor on standby. Nell and I shouldered all the risks ourselves.

I stretched my neck, assessing my options. Should I say nothing, or tell a modified version of the truth? They hadn’t seen me use the Passages, and it had been so confused in there, they might not have spotted Skyla fleeing. Alber had been miles behind. I could say I’d gone in there alone, looking for a bit of fun. Nell had told me
that
wasn’t punishable by death. I had no clue where she got her information, but she’d told me that some of the kids at the Academy sneaked in there for thrills when they were too young to be allowed to. She’d learned that from one of our sources a couple of years ago, when the Alliance had upped their patrols near the Academy after something had happened in the lower-level Passages involving students there. That seemed likely, from what I’d heard of Academy students—they were all privileged rich kids who’d been brought up knowing about the Multiverse, probably even getting to travel offworld. Lucky bastards.

It looked like a partial lie might be my only option. Not like there was much else I could do locked up here. The cuffs were loose enough not to rub against my skin on my wrists and ankles, but now I’d slept a little, it was clear that they’d drained the magic out of me. It was something I’d always taken for granted, even if I knew it shouldn’t be here, even if I knew I couldn’t use it to its full extent. Like a sense I’d been half-aware of had been abruptly cut off. It hurt.

I sat bolt upright as the door opened. Alliance Guy—Walker, whoever he was—entered the room. I stared. The image I’d had in my head was of a lean and menacing black-clad Alliance guard with pitiless eyes—this guy, dressed in standard office clothes, a plain dark shirt and trousers, looked surprisingly ordinary. And it threw me off to see the imprint of my own combat boot in vivid bruises across his face. I completely forgot what I planned to say.

“What do you want?” I asked, hoarsely.

He ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m supposed to question you.”

“Ask away,” I said, shifting against the wall. “I’m not going anywhere.” But my gaze still darted over to the door. He saw and closed it behind him, not taking his eyes off me. To my own annoyance, a part of me couldn’t help noting he was pretty good-looking, under the bruises.

But we were alone in here, and I was cuffed, powerless. A shiver broke out across my skin.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

Sure you aren’t
. My entire body went tense, and I fought the urge to shrink back. I couldn’t afford to let him know how intimidating it was to be trapped like this. But he didn’t take a step closer to me. He remained by the door, his gaze steady.

“What were you doing in the Passages?”

Straight to the point, then.

“Like I’m going to tell
you
, Walker.”

His eyes narrowed, just slightly. “Don’t call me that. My name’s Kay. What’s yours?”

I blinked. So we were exchanging names, now?